tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59800022009-08-26T01:31:31.088-07:00The Clothed MajaFour a.m. and six feet down, already up with the larksMarcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comBlogger50125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1087807772569162502004-06-21T01:45:00.000-07:002004-06-23T02:37:41.296-07:00THE NAKED MAJA’S TOP 100 BRITISH ALBUMS
Why? Because I knew exactly which 100 albums were going to be in the Observer poll, because I knew exactly in which order they were going to appear – those handy braces of Beatles and Stones – because I knew exactly which lightweight point-missers were going to vomit whatever counted as the counter-argument (which fundamentally comes down to loving it Marcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-108748253254307712004-06-17T05:14:00.000-07:002004-06-17T07:28:52.543-07:00...BUT WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE ERIC DOLPHY?
He was on screen for barely two seconds in the 'Trane doc (and not at all surprising, incidentally, to read in Victor Lewis-Smith's review of same in today's Standard that Yentob is a confessed jazz hater) and already seemed like the ghost of a feather. A few trills on his flute, the waft of that unmistakeable beard, and Eric Dolphy stands back again toMarcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1087460492592673482004-06-17T00:37:00.000-07:002004-06-18T00:57:32.263-07:00COLTRANE: THE TAINTED SAINT
Last night's BBC1 documentary on Coltrane was predictably unfulfilling and frustrating. OK, (un)fair enough, we know that because the BBC is what it always denies it is, Coltrane is allotted 45 minutes in a vacant post-World Cup slot whereas if, say, Michael Frayn popped his Chablis tomorrow he'd get a suffocatingly reverent four-part series. We are under no scores Marcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1086942444673130262004-06-11T00:36:00.000-07:002004-06-11T01:27:24.673-07:00DON'T LET THE BLOGOSPHERE CATCH YOU CRYING
So: Elvin Jones gone, Robert Quine gone, Steve Lacy gone, and, last night, the biggest of the lot, Ray Charles, gone, also from liver cancer, aged 73.
If you remember that Stanley Spencer's Church Of Me was a deliberate marriage of the sacred and the carnal, then that's what Uncle Ray did, a thousand fold, to popular music. Beyond question, he was theMarcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1086787208908271962004-06-09T06:19:00.000-07:002004-06-09T06:30:00.050-07:00BLOCK OUT THE WRITER
These two articles have really knocked me for seven. The Propertius quotes in the second one hit me particularly hard like the punch of an oncoming and long-deserved fist.
The moot questions being:
1. Do I really only have a limited number of aesthetic pieces to juggle in a slightly different order every time I sit down to write? Is that all there is to me as a writer? Marcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1086256439269477832004-06-03T02:04:00.000-07:002004-06-03T02:57:06.313-07:00WHAT THE ALBUM MADE TO LOVE MAGIC BY NICK DRAKE IS LIKE
Like installing a lifesize cardboard cutout at the dining room table and pretending you're coming home to her.
Like cooking Marks and Spencer meals for two, eating it all yourself and pretending that you're having dinner together.
Like walking through Tate Modern or the Imperial War Museum on your own and thinking that it's the same thing.
Marcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1085402473831532472004-05-24T05:32:00.000-07:002004-05-24T05:41:13.830-07:00OGUN RECORDS UPDATE - URGENT AND KEY!
Talk about synchronicity. Well you can talk about any Police album you like, but you'd be far wiser to get to your nearest decent record shop, as I did on Friday, only to find, reissued as two albums on one CD, two of the great Mike Osborne masterpieces on Ogun of which I spoke a couple of weeks ago - Border Crossing (OG 310) by his Trio, and Marcel's Muse Marcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1085050373446060882004-05-20T03:51:00.000-07:002004-05-20T03:52:53.446-07:00EUROVISION
I would guess one way to start would be to observe how Greece managed to come second in this year’s contest with a Jazz Insects cover version. No, alas, it was a different “Shake It,” an energetic does-what-it-says-on-Ricky-Martin’s-tin dance romp with a touch of postmodern Bucks Fizzism (the innate genius of Bucks Fizz lying in the fact that they never KNEW they were being Marcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1084957078239251402004-05-19T01:57:00.000-07:002004-05-19T09:00:06.563-07:00THE JAZZ INSECTS
“… Music (and the writing that goes with it, bad AND good) is so routinely used to access and to frame feeling - genuine feeling, masked feeling, mistaken feeling, fake or manipulated feelings - that it's exactly what one can't just wrap oneself in, to escape, or recover, or just gently think and rethink, remember and memorialise. It can make for poor psychic shelter, most of Marcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1084446633368072932004-05-13T04:09:00.000-07:002004-05-13T04:10:33.366-07:00WHY THERE ISN’T AN ARTICLE ON THIS WEBSITE ABOUT THE YEAR 1962
I spent a rather fruitless and frustrating evening yesterday trying to revise and rework the piece that I did on ILE back in January 2003 about the hits of 1962. Having struggled painfully with it, I came to exactly the same conclusion that Penman did with his Patti Smith review in The Wire – namely, that after having written Marcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1083916739093737292004-05-07T00:54:00.000-07:002004-05-07T01:03:26.996-07:00APHEX TWIN
SELECTED AMBIENT WORKS VOLUME 2
TEN YEARS AFTER
The following is an experiment in uniting thought and expression of emotional reactions to music. The words which you will read have been improvised and written spontaneously in real time while listening to the two CDs which comprise this album, an album which is one of the author’s absolute favourites, and a record which carries past Marcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1083766930386436702004-05-05T07:21:00.000-07:002004-05-05T07:26:35.590-07:00JOE MEEK AT 75
“I could afford to be arrogant if I wanted,” chuckles an impossibly youthful-looking Sir Joe Meek, gazing out from the top floor of his recently refurbished Triumph plc Studios in Holloway, “but I realise that a lot of what I’ve achieved in my career has been down to luck as well as my skills, such as they are. I’ve had a lot of bad breaks followed by an avalanche of good ones. Marcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1083319515655889352004-04-30T02:58:00.000-07:002004-04-30T03:09:34.000-07:00ALL ABOUT OGUN
Another longer text, this time in the form of a small tribute to my favourite record label, Ogun Records. Formed in 1973 by the great expatriate South African bassist Harry Miller and his then wife Hazel after the major record companies’ tax loss honeymoon with contemporary/free British jazz/improv had ended, its purpose was to record as comprehensively as possible the music fromMarcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1083225874165808842004-04-29T01:03:00.000-07:002004-04-29T01:08:51.013-07:00SUFJAN STEVENS – GREETINGS FROM MICHIGAN: THE GREAT LAKE STATE
When you’re vulnerable, you sense that some manifestations of vulnerability in music speak more to you, and/or are truer, than others. It’s a tricky emotion to carry convincingly – or at least to convince me that your head is crying to be put on my shoulder. Some expressions of vulnerability make me want to hug the singer forever, Marcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1082972131662430182004-04-26T02:34:00.000-07:002004-04-26T02:39:44.043-07:00TO THOSE WHO KNOW WHO THEY ARE AND WHO DESERVE IT
“I’m your friend until you use me,
And then be sure I won’t be there.”
(From “The Great Valerio” by Richard and Linda Thompson)
FENNESZ – VENICE – FINISH
At the end of The Shawshank Redemption, Tim Robbins escapes from jail via a tunnel. He emerges in a quiet but unusually lush country lane which is quite unlike anything else seen in the film, Marcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1082647716024934402004-04-22T08:26:00.000-07:002004-04-22T08:32:43.340-07:00INFINITE LIVEZ – BUSH MEAT
FACTFILE
Spike Milligan of Britrap. Not Roots Manuva, who is now the Michael Bentine.
Real name: Steven Henry
Imaginary accomplice: Barry Convex, one-eyed teddy bear
Who does the intro. Sheep and rain noises rescued from “It’s Grim Up North.” String bending. Could be Derek Bailey or koto. Sounds like Mercedes McCambridge in The Exorcist. “Rocked in the BUSH!”Marcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1082533471691145602004-04-21T00:41:00.000-07:002004-04-21T00:48:36.966-07:00THE COLLEGE DROPOUT – THE BEST HIP HOP ALBUM IN THE WORLD…EVER?
This website has many subsidiary functions. I might use it to warn you of important new music that is forthcoming; at other times I might use it to recommend old music that could be more important than previously thought (my view is not so much expending time reading about music to which you’re never going to listen, but rather Marcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1081346331217395722004-04-07T06:42:00.000-07:002004-04-07T07:02:38.296-07:001969 IN MY SUNSHINE
I was five years old in 1969, so knew nothing of Manson, Altamont or the My Lai massacre until much later, not to mention the Stooges or the MC5. It is the first year of my life which I can vividly remember, as it was also my first year at primary school. I remember the daily walks there and back with my mother through streets long since demolished, full of dark grocer’s Marcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1081150312320938092004-04-05T00:30:00.000-07:002004-04-05T00:35:35.780-07:00DAVID ESSEX: HE ALL INSANE
We think we know David Essex. We have him pinned down as a slightly less naff ‘70s equivalent of Robbie Williams, all self-deprecating cheeky chappie grins with an actorly luvvie overlay. But we need to think again, because the six albums he made for CBS between 1973-77 have now been reissued in three two-albums-per-CD editions – respectively paired as his first and Marcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1080815645722922932004-04-01T02:33:00.000-08:002004-04-23T03:28:59.670-07:00DJ WRONGSPEED – PIRATE FLAVAS
I suppose the best thing about not-entirely-legal CD(R)s is that they provide the listener with something which, as it hasn’t necessarily been packaged for the convenience of mass consumption, offers more life than might be found in conventional albums, no matter how good. Or at least they offer a broader snapshot of the narrowness of life.
In fact Pirate Flavas Marcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1080723663527515372004-03-31T01:00:00.000-08:002004-03-31T01:04:40.670-08:00FRAGMENTS
Excellent article about returning to the music and thence to the world. The piece works because he doesn’t fall into the Hornby trap/soapbox of confusing “good music” with “my taste;” the humanity content is always more important than the content or existence of one’s record collection.
Strange how the same record helped save both of us.
Some of course cannot be saved. I’m nearly Marcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1080632618659682502004-03-29T23:41:00.000-08:002004-03-29T23:47:13.700-08:00GREAT PERFORMANCES OF MUSIC BY INDIVIDUALS RECORDED IN CHURCHES
(The first in an exceptionally intermittent series)
1. ABBESS HILDEGARD OF BINGEN/GOTHIC VOICES, dir CHRISTOPHER PAGE A Feather On The Breath Of God
Recorded in the Church of St-Jude-on-the-Hill in Hampstead (actually in Hampstead Garden Suburb) on 14 September 1981, about two weeks before I started university, this was the first Marcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1080547597329804452004-03-29T00:04:00.000-08:002004-03-29T00:10:11.576-08:00THE GREY AREA OF DJ DANGERMOUSE
Already enough words have been expanded on DJ Dangermouse’s The Grey Album such that any further comment seems superfluous. Some readers may regard it as a terrible dereliction of duty that this writer has come so late to acknowledging the CD, let alone write about it, or possibly the final confirmation that this writer has indeed degenerated into a rusty old tubMarcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1080215952591190492004-03-25T03:56:00.000-08:002004-03-25T04:02:40.810-08:00TODD RUNDGREN – LIARS
“All of these songs are about a paucity of truth. At first they may seem to be about other things, but that is just a reflection of how much dishonesty we have accepted in our daily lives. We are raised from birth to believe things that cannot be proven or that are plainly not true. People will often brag of their honesty, when there is so much they have simply chosen toMarcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980002.post-1080139966260232712004-03-24T06:50:00.000-08:002004-03-26T01:01:00.343-08:00THE STREETS – A GRAND DON’T COME FOR FREE
I know what you’re expecting me to say. You’re expecting me to say that this is garage’s Beauty Stab, a car crash of a second album, an anachronism long since superseded in relevance and sonics by the grimy rascals. Perhaps on an incautious first listen you may well agree that this is the case.
But, as usual, you have to keep listening. If you’re Marcello Carlinnoreply@blogger.com